Engineers at Google Inc. are claiming that rival Internet
search company, Microsoft's Bing, is copying search results
from the world's #1 engine. Suspicious of the new
competition on the block, Google staff set up random results on
the Google site for a handful of unlikely search terms, such as
“hiybbprqag”, which they set up to lead to a Los Angeles
theater seating plan when searched on Google.

The sting operation proved Google's suspicions, engineers said,
as the fake results began surfacing on Bing within a couple of
weeks. They said that they welcome honest competition,
but not Bing's use of “recycled search results from a
competitor.” Bing claims that Google's results are taken
into account when producing its own search results, but that
they are just one factor out of many.

“We use over 1,000 different signals and features in our
ranking algorithm,” Bing executive Harry Shum commented,
referring to the mathematical code search engines use to
determine results. Every company ostensibly develops its
own algorithms, and the quality of results relies on them,
making them an important factor in a search engine's
effectiveness.

Shum seemingly waved off the Google allegations and their
undercover operation as “a creative tactic by a competitor, and
we'll take it as a back-handed compliment.” At the time
Google initiated the sting operation, it controlled more than
70 percent of the US search engine market, while Bing had less
than 10 percent.

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